|
Iran: Top Cleric Issues Fatwa Against Azeri Journalists
Qom, 30 Nov. (AKI) - One of Iran's leading conservative clerics, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, has issued a fatwa - religious edict - in which he sentences to death two Azeri journalists, Rafegh Taghi and Samir Sedaghatoglu. "It is the duty of every good Muslim to help the execution of this fatwa," wrote on his website the cleric, who is based in the holy Shiite city of Qom.Rafegh Taghi, an editorialist for the newspaper Senet, published in Baku in the republic of Azerbaijan, is considered guilty of having offended Islam and its Prophet Mohammed in an article called 'Us and Europe' which Lankarani slammed as "clearly offensive to Islam" because it talks about "the superiority of Europe compared to the Middle East .. it considers Islam inferior to Christianity .. offends the Prophet Mohammed." Samir Sedaghatoglu, the paper's publisher, has instead been charged with "not forbidding the apostate to offend Islam." And the NYT will be all over this! "Those who commit such acts are guilty of apostasy if they were born Muslim and are guilty of offending Islam if they are infidels," the ayatollah also said. Go get 'em, Reuters! You, too, AP! The edict echoes the Iranian fatwa against Indian writer Salman Rushdie issued in 1989 by Ayatollah Rouhollah Mussawi Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. An Azerbaijani court has sentenced the writer Rafiq and his publisher to two months in jail for an article which was illustrated by the same cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad originally published in Denmark that caused outcry in the Muslim world. Posted by: mrp 2006-11-30 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=173566 |